Drafty blog

Why Drafty has no chat history

A conversation does not always need to become a record.

12 August 2026 · Drafty

Digital conversations increasingly behave like documents. We write something small, the app stores it, and months later it is still sitting there waiting to be searched, forwarded, rediscovered or misunderstood with impressive efficiency.

Drafty starts from a different premise: some conversations are useful precisely because they belong to the moment in which they happen.

Conversation is not the same thing as storage

In Drafty, both people enter a live Draft. One person writes at a time. When the other person replies, the new Draft replaces the one that came before it. There is no conventional message-history screen and no scrollback through the conversation.

That changes the rhythm. Instead of composing for an archive, you are responding to the person who is actually there. The product is intentionally closer to speaking than filing.

Less history creates a different kind of attention

Permanent history is useful. We are not pretending otherwise. Receipts, addresses, plans, work instructions and important information often should be kept. There are already excellent tools for that.

Drafty is for a different category: the quick thought, the private joke, the check-in, the thing you wanted to say to one particular person without turning it into another item in a searchable personal database.

Temporary does not mean impossible to copy

Drafty ends an active Draft when iOS reports a screenshot, screen recording, mirroring or screen sharing event. That is a safety behaviour, not a magical shield. A screenshot may already exist by the time iOS reports it, and someone can always photograph a screen with another device.

The honest rule is simple: Drafty is designed not to keep a conventional chat history. It cannot guarantee that another human will never retain what they see.

A conversation, not a record

Removing history is not an optimisation. It is the product idea. Drafty asks whether messaging can feel more present when the software stops treating every exchange like something that deserves to live forever.

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